The 1980 Portland Conference was 12 days after Mt. St. Helen had erupted. There was lots of ash around all over, and I still have a bottle of that ash. That was the year we had an afternoon trip to near Mt. St. Helen’s planned, and still took the trip. On the way up the bus stopped at Crown Point which was typically one of the windiest spots around. The wind was so strong that it blew the name badges out of the plastic holders. It also blew Ruth Jewson, Helen Hartness, and me on top of each other (which was scary for us with Ruth, but she wasn’t hurt). The bus also stopped at Multnomah Falls which was stunning. That evening I played for Bert Adams to sing songs from some musicals. He did a magnificent job.

One of my first NCFR conferences was in Portland and I was still a doctoral student then, and a member of the Executive Committee of NCFR as the student rep. It was at that meeting that I was really thinking about my career and where I should go with it. I was a student in family sociology and my chair was Lee Axelson, then the President of NCFR. He wanted me to take a sociology position. But others suggested that my interests would be better served in Child and Family Development (then in Home Ec) where relationship issues would be easier to study. I did not know which way to go.

At that meeting we took a bus trip to the coast of Oregon for a “salmon bake” on the beach. I sat on the bus between Eleanor Luckey and Ruth Jewson. All the way over and back we talked about career directions and those two people who I respected so much listened to me, and gave me their counsel, experience, and wisdom. Eleanor noted that she had been trained in psychology but chose to go into child and family development since there were more peers there who could help her frame her ideas and help them mature. Ruth saw the emerging scholarship in CFD and the quality of research coming out. The result of that was my turning down sociology jobs and taking the CFD position at UNC-Greensboro, where John Scanzoni and others later joined me a a great department. And my first students there were Jay Mancini and Gary Bowen, who have become successful scholars in their own right.

So the memories of that NCFR in Portland so many years ago remind me of how important it is to continue to foster opportunities for young student scholars to meet with senior people who can give them other ideas, and perhaps bring perspectives that their own programs may not be able to offer. Keep mixing us all up, and recognize the key role you play in the stirring of the creative pots in this vital area of family research and practice.

In 1988-89, I was Association of Councils president-elect. In 1989-90, I was president. There was no vice president. Other officers were program chair, secretary/treasurer, and past president. Both the president elect and the president served on the NCFR Board.